BRAVE NEW VOICES: They’re everywhere!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2014

Part 4—Rachel’s latest tale: Brave new voices are everywhere in the rapidly changing media landscape.

The world of American journalism is changing before our eyes. Consider the report in yesterday’s New York Times about the storied New Republic, whose owner says it’s no longer “liberal,” or even a “magazine.”

The New Republic is now one hundred years old. Yesterday, Jennifer Scheussler reported some of the changes which have occurred under Chris Hughes, “the Facebook multimillionaire who bought the magazine in 2012.”

SCHUESSLER (11/19/14): Eyebrows were raised last year when Mr. Hughes, a former organizer for Barack Obama, introduced the redesigned magazine with an editor's letter that omitted the words ''liberal'' or ''liberalism.'' These days, while he says he remains committed to print, he is also ready to jettison ''magazine.''

''Twenty years ago, no question, it was a political magazine, full stop,'' Mr. Hughes said in a joint interview with Mr. Vidra in New York. ''Today, I don't call it a magazine at all. I think we're a digital media company.''

Mr. Hughes (who gave up the editor in chief title but remains publisher) and Mr. Vidra dismissed speculation that they wanted to take the magazine in a more lowbrow, BuzzFeed-like direction. But they did say there was room to increase the digital audience to as much as ''tens of millions'' of unique monthly visitors by focusing on a broader range of topics and on new forms of digital storytelling that ''travel well'' on the web.

Hughes doesn’t want to go lowbrow! He just wants “to increase the digital audience…by focusing on a broader range of topics and on new forms of digital storytelling that ‘travel well’ on the web.”

All around the media world, a lot of people are refusing to go lowbrow in precisely this fashion. At the new Salon, they keep adding kid reporters who churn reports of this type:

WEDNESDAY, NOV 19, 2014 10:19 AM ESTThe year of the rear: A thorough history of 2014 in butts
From "Anaconda" to Kim Kardashian, a look back at the posteriors that got us to where we are today
ANNA SILMAN

Silman graduated from McGill in 2012. Today, as Salon’s new “deputy entertainment editor,” she’s engaged in that sort of digital storytelling.

A lot of storytelling is being offered as the new media grow. Consider the story Rachel told at the start of last night’s program.

Rachel’s story took us almost seven minutes into her program, depending on when you want to stop counting. The storytelling started like this:

MADDOW (11/19/14): Good evening, Chris. Thank you. Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour.

Do you remember a guy named Randy Scheunemann? Randy Scheunemann, he was the top foreign policy adviser to the McCain-Palin campaign in 2008. That’s him, the guy with the beard there.

He doesn’t have that memorable a face. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I just mean, he doesn’t— You don’t see him and instantly know who he is.

He also has a name that is kind of hard to pronounce, definitely hard to spell. Honestly, Randy Scheunemann has never been a super famous guy in politics.

Randy Scheunemann’s name is hard to pronounce. It’s definitely hard to spell!

He doesn’t have that memorable a face. With that, we were off to the fair.

As noted, Maddow’s story wound on for a rather long time. Soon, she was discussing the story of the ski lift fight which, she said, The Daily Beast had broken this very week:

MADDOW: John McCain did not win the presidency and Randy Scheunemann went back to being a standard Washington foreign policy guy. And you don’t hear much about him anymore.

You haven’t heard much about him since then. Until this week.

Until this week, a really, really weird story about Randy Scheunemann was broken by The Daily Beast. It turns out Randy Scheunemann belongs to a private skiing club in Montana.
I did not know there was such a thing as a private skiing club. I thought like, you know, you buy a lift ticket, then you go ski on a mountain with other people who are skiing on the mountain and that’s skiing! I—

Apparently, there are places you can do it privately, without the riff-raff. And Randy Scheunemann apparently belongs to one of those.

And on the ski lift, at his private skiing club, The Daily Beast and a number of other outlets now report that Randy Scheunemann got into a fight.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Maddow’s chronology was already wrong.

In truth, that doesn’t enormously matter. But as Maddow continued to entertain us with her thoughts about private ski clubs, her storytelling continued to struggle and flail.

Her first six or seven minutes were devoted to this dreck. With apologies, here’s how her story continued:

MADDOW (continuing directly): And on the ski lift, at his private skiing club, The Daily Beast and a number of other outlets now report that Randy Scheunemann got into a fight. He got into a fight on the ski lift with a white supremacist, specifically with this guy, who is sort of America’s foremost white supremacist.

This is a guy named Richard Spencer. He was recently forcibly deported from Budapest when he tried to organize an international white supremacist conference and the nation of Hungary caught him trying to sneak into their country even though they had banned him. He calls for the creation of a white homeland. He runs an organization called the National Policy Institute, to try to advance the goal of a white homeland. His group is based in Whitefish, Montana.

He’s also founded a few online white supremacist magazines and Web sites, including this one, which is called Alternative Right.

And apparently, making a career as a white supremacist leader these days is a pretty remunerative thing. At least the dude is making enough money to belong to the same private ski club that Randy Scheunemann does in Montana.

Who even knew there were private ski clubs? Anyway, there are! And apparently, the two of them got into a fight on the ski lift.

Insults were exchanged. Punches were threatened. And the reason it all broke out in the news this week is because that private ski club in Montana, it’s called the Big Mountain Club, they apparently at some point in this fight between two of their members felt they had to decide between them, which of these two guys was going to be allowed to stay as a member of their private ski club:

Randy Scheunemann, Washington policy adviser guy, adviser to John McCain? Or the Aryan Nation white supremacist guy who’s trying to build a homeland for the endangered white race from his home base in Montana?

The Big Mountain Club in Whitefish, Montana, decided they’d go with the white supremacist. They kicked Randy Scheunemann out and kept the Ku Klux other guy! Yeah!

And so now, in the wake of that, you have Whitefish, Montana city council meetings that have suddenly gotten very crowded. They look like this, totally packed with local residents who apparently now realize they have the leader of a white nationalist movement living in their town, getting in fights on their ski lifts.

A local anti-racist effort has sprung up in Whitefish. They’re trying to figure out basically some way to force this guy out or at least maybe pass an anti-discrimination ordinance of some kind that maybe would annoy the guy enough that he might leave on his own.

It’s turning into this big to-do in Montana.

That’s enjoyable storytelling. It’s also largely inaccurate.

According to the Daily Beast, the incident which kicked this thing off occurred “in early 2013.” That was almost two years ago.

According to Scheunemann, it involved a brief argument as he and Spencer got off the ski lift. There never was a fight.

According to The Daily Beast, the story jumps ahead to the ski club’s annual Christmas party last year, in December 2013. According to Scheunemann, he and Spencer briefly argued again that night. According to Scheunemann, he told the leaders of the club that Spencer had to leave the club or that he, Scheunemann, would.

Spencer didn’t leave the club. For that reason, Scheunemann did, almost a year ago.

This story didn’t break “this week.” That’s clear from The Daily Beast report, to which Maddow provided no link.

Maddow did link to a recent news report about that city council meeting in Whitefish. According to the news report, the jam-packed meeting had nothing to do with any “ski lift fight,” or with the ski club at all.

Back to the Daily Beast:

In the (month old) Beast report, Spencer is quoted saying that Scheunemann’s account of the incidents in question involves “a gross mischaracterization of events.” Leaders of the club refused to comment to the Daily Beast.

Last night, there was no sign that Maddow or anyone on her staff had tried to speak with anyone concerning what actually happened in the two-year-old “ski lift fight.” She simply embellished Scheunemann’s account, jumbling her chronology in major ways as she did.

Increasingly, that's how Maddow performs storytelling of a weekday night.

Maddow’s is a Brave New Voice. As with Hughes’ version of The New Republic, she’s deeply involved in “storytelling.” On the other hand, she’s partisan to the point of being a propagandist.

Why did Maddow waste everyone’s time with last night’s embellished, inaccurate story? Largely, because it set up a scary framework with which she was shouting boo at her viewers.

That said, Maddow’s entire program last night was a tribute to propaganda. There are numerous ways to dumb the world down. Maddow is working on hers.

Much of Maddow’s propaganda involves the omission of facts. Persistently, she simplifies the world to make you feel politically scared and morally extra good.

Last night, she clowned her way through a denunciation of the “schizophrenic” American public, based on responses to a recent NBC poll. She then feigned ignorance concerning decisions by the broadcast networks to avoid televising presidential speeches.

To be clear, we assume she was feigning ignorance. With Maddow, it’s increasingly hard to tell.

Our media are changing before our eyes. Increasingly, Maddow is getting wealthy and famous by dumbing the world way down.

To our ear, her Brave New Voice sounds a lot like Sean’s. It's hard to believe that a modern nation can actually function this way.

195 comments:

Even 20 years ago the New Republic was political but not necessarily liberal. They ran a mix of opinion and I wouldn't call the editor, Andrew Sullivan, particularly liberal. It had strayed a fair distance from its roots.

Next thing you know, people will be prohibited from living in certain neighborhoods because of their politics, forbidden to shop at certain stores, unable to buy gas at certain gas stations. You will have to search for the placard announcing whether a business is for liberals or conservatives and choose accordingly. O brave new world that will be!

Why not take the next step and put people with undesirable political views into jail?

Two points. First, I'll repeat what I've written earlier about my disagreement with Bob and his criticism of Salon and similar sites. There's nothing wrong with an online "magazine" containing style-oriented content, or other non-serious stories - even if the site contains no serious stories at all. The web is a big place, and there are many blogs and other sites one can go to for serious discussions.

Regarding Rachel Maddow and the way she tells stories, I agree with Bob that she's "dumbing [us] down," but I don't necessarily agree that she does so in a way that's similar to Sean Hannity and other conservative media hosts. Although Sean (and Mark Levin or Rush Limbaugh) misinform their viewers/listeners, they do so while at least superficially appearing to talk about serious topics such as a philosophy of governance, and the relationship between things like liberty and regulation. In contrast, Maddow often appears to be speaking in a Dr. Seuss-type style, about matters that don't amount to anything.

Obviously, I have no idea if the difference in styles contributes to the difference in viewers/listeners, but even though I tend to favor liberal ideas I can't help but feel "talked down to" more when I'm listening to people like Rachel.

If you are suggesting that it is OK if Maddow gets her facts wrong in trivial stories or entertainment-oriented segments because they aren't serious, I cannot agree. Also, I think Somerby has pointed out some factual problems in the past with her more serious stories too. So it isn't just that she isn't taking the fluff seriously. She doesn't seem to have appropriate standards for the real stories either.

I also don't think we should be tolerating a "buyer beware" or "anything goes -- its the internet" attitude either. It is in our interest as a democracy to have better informed voters, not people who must be suspicious of everything they read because our media has degenerated into a digital mess. So I think the complaining is worthwhile, no matter what Maddow's audience size, because she supposedly reflects liberal opinion and may thus befuddle the people who are our likely voters.

Are you suggesting that Somerby misquoted from the transcript of Maddow's show? If so, please point out where he was in error. If you dispute his contention that she was incorrect in her reporting, contradict him (with your own links to your evidence).

I am not the person writing Somerby's website. If you think he is misquoting her, say so (and say how). Don't just write a vague comment implying that Somerby is way off base without supporting your contention.

Again, you think that if people don't go on your wild goose chases, you somehow win. You don't. You either put up or shut up. That's how it works.

"Although Sean (and Mark Levin or Rush Limbaugh) misinform their viewers/listeners, they do so while at least superficially appearing to talk about serious topics such as a philosophy of governance, and the relationship between things like liberty and regulation."

Holy shit. That pile of horse manure is bigger than the snow drifts in Buffalo.

Levin showed what he was when he refused to honor the embargo on the president's speeches (delay his own remarks on it until the speech had actually been delivered). This is a basic courtesy that journalists all adhere to, except him.

Eric D. Knowles, Brian S. Lowery, Rosalind M. Chow, and Miguel M. UnzuetaResearchers who examine race equality and prejudice have generally assumed that White Americans rarely consider their own race or the privilege it confers within society. However, some research suggests that White Americans do think about their race and that identification with Whiteness brings with it personal and collective threats, namely the possibility that successes are not entirely earned and also the knowledge that they are members in a group that benefits from unfair social advantages. To deal with these threats, White Americans can take one of three strategies: denying the idea that whites are privileged, distancing themselves from the White category, or working to dismantle traditional systems of White privilege. Each identity-management strategy has different outcomes and implications for the reduction of racial inequality." From Perspectives on Psychological Science, Vol 9, Issue 6.

Although it may have been the work of a lesbian and many lesbians probably liked it.

You, of course, may be a lesbian. We don't know. You may also be a liberal, but remember, reading Salon does not advance progressive interests and this excessive focus on gay marriage demonstrates an elitist disregard for the kind of appeal needed to reach the average people spoken to by Jay Leno.

Few things demonstrate Cranky Old Man Syndrome as well as this post by Bob. Just to begin, we spent five minutes perusing Hannity's site. Anyone who thinks Maddow is the equivalent of Hannity is, to put it bluntly, a fucking loon. Global warming as a conspiracy theory, ads, ads, ads, many for products and services of dubious merit, to put even more money in Hannity's already bulging pockets, black people portrayed as pot smoking thugs, endless attacks on Obama, every right wing conspiracy theory and cranky complaint, no matter how crazy, one can imagine is there, day after day after day. And against this, Maddow characterizing a verbal altercation as a "fight" makes her JUST LIKE HANNITY.

Yet again, we wonder how anyone can take Bob seriously. Increasingly, his behavior is dishonest, overwrought, even, dare we say, increasingly kooky. We begin to wonder how long it will be before we visit this page and see a stream of nonsense words strung together, with the words "Rachel Maddow" in between them, almost like punctuation. Increasingly, we come to expect this.

You kid, of course. Yesterday's post was better evidence of COMS and the stream of nonsense was there, just condensed in a comment we made to which your responded. We repeat ourselves (as Bob often does).

He made a comparison between one aspect of Hannity's behavior and Maddow's -- he didn't say they were alike in all respects. That is what you trolls add to discussion. Much easier to attack a ridiculous statement like that than to deal with what Somerby actually says.

Both Maddow and Hannity speak through mouths that have roughly the same shape and function. Does that, then, make it correct to say, "To our ear, her Brave New Voice sounds a lot like Sean’s"? We suggest if Maddow sounds like Hannity to Bob, that he get his ears checked.

Hannity is a repugnant figure, a con man pushing products and "cures" that are, and have been for decades, eroding the country. He, in the meantime, is fabulously rich, and getting fabulously richer, and the crazier the garbage he pushes, the richer he gets still. In Bob's increasingly twisted world, Hannity DOES NOT EXIST, except as something to compare Maddow to and claim she is awful, just like him, even if he has to twist minor things around and claim they make her just like him.

Go ahead. Look at his website -- a digital monument to mendacity and naked greed. And then tell me with a straight face that Maddow is anything like him. Both have a TV show. Both promulgate points of view, using their mouths. Both are human beings. Both are rich, although Hannity is far richer, and getting far richer still. And the similarities end right about there. That is, if you aren't a kook.

What is it that makes Maddow a repugnant figure? Bob has been relentlessly attacking her for years. In all that time, we have yet to see her do anything -- even anything after being filtered and massaged and twisted by Bob -- that makes her repugnant. Five minutes on Hannity's site, and we had all we needed. Or wanted. So please expound: what is it that Maddow does, what positions does she take, that makes her repugnant?

Read this blog instead of mocking it. It isn't her positions but her dishonesty, her disregard for values of journalism (as a profession), her continual self-promotion to the neglect of progressive interests, and her neuroticism presented as cuteness. She is smart enough to do better if she gave a damn about something besides herself. Somerby doesn't quite say this himself -- he presents the evidence of this. Others mileage may differ, as Somerby says.

There is nobody in the blogging world as obsequious, as groveling to the blogger as 11:24. It's relentless, too, every single day in any post that draws criticism. No matter what it is, 11:24 is there to mimic Bob, usually making sure to tell us what point he was trying to make. If Bob says Rachel has poor journalistic values, 11:24 will agree that Rachel has poor journalistic values. No other blogger I've ever seen has such a fawning sycophant.

We have seen Bob accuse her of being dishonest. As often as not, we came away with the conclusion that it was Bob who was being dishonest, that it was Bob who was overstating, twisting, in some cases making things up, in an effort to make her look dishonest. As for reading this blog, we do. We have been reading this bog since about the infamous 2000 election (and as an aside, we give Bob much credit for, in the past 1.5 weeks or so, refraining from discussing that, or dredging it up. Had we not become so cynical, we would almost begin hoping for other improvements). But we also think it is naive to expect Maddow to function as straight journalist, which she is not. She is an advocate. The journalism she does is a function of that advocacy. We have made this point before. Finally, we invite people to look at Hannity's site. THAT is repugnance. Maddow calling a verbal altercation a "fight" is Bob, in effect, admitting that he has nothing else to attack Maddow over.

Maddow didn't only call a verbal altercation a "fight." That isn't Somerby's complaint about what she wrote. Focusing on that suggests you are unable to comprehend despite reading.

Urban, you don't know what the word sycophant means, or fawning for that matter. It involves praise. I have frequently explained Somerby to dumbasses, but I have not ever praised him, to my knowledge. I have not ever tried to curry favor with him (because why? it isn't as if he has power of any kind). The word just makes no sense here.

The same criticism could be made of you. You guys are relentless in your criticism, appearing here every day to say something negative, usually gratuitous. It wears down those of us who like this blog and want it to continue. It would wear down Somerby if he ever read the comments. That you guys, in your relentless criticism and mockery, are hurting others who wish to read this blog in peace makes no difference to you and your army of trolls. You never stop.

Of course I am here every day trying to counteract this deluge of garbage. I am also sending money to him. I will keep doing it, no matter how much negative crap you drop into this comment box.

We do find his/her delightful commentary to be useful in fostering the illusion around this teeny tiny part of your lovely planet that we may be responsible for as much as 95% of the stuff in the excellent Somerby comment box. Paranoia serves a deep need in the Wanna Be Tribe of LiberalWorld that smirking and shrugging can stimulate.

In the future, i fear, all web-a-zines will look like salon.com. TNR is just taking its lead from www.theatlantic.com in lowering its brow little by little. How far can we be from a TNR "Sexiest Dem Alive" cover every year, unless that would be too partisan.

In the heady days of RR, TNR had Kinsley, Hertzberg, Fred Barnes, Mickey Kaus, and Peretz to counter the madness without going as Trotskyite as The Nation. These magazines weren't expected to make money. We had different kinds of millionaires in those days.

Apparently a lot of things were different in those days. Music was run by people who liked music, if one can imagine. Political magazines lost money. News departments were expected to lose money. Newspaper made money because of ads, not circulation (or original hits, a phrase which has taken on new meaning in this age of Google).

Strangely, TNR is currently running an old Stanley Kauffman review of "The Graduate" in light of Mike Nichols's death. With the passing of the studio system, American movies were damn near European until Spielberg and Lucas taught us how to make blockbusters again. Now our traditional high-brow magazines want to be blockbusters, too. Even The New Yorker is suffering from this digi-creep. Can Harper's and the New York Review of Books be far behind?

I've lived through some wonderful golden ages. Kennedy, The Beatles, rock music, James Bond, NASA, Watergate journalism, Woody Allen, New Wave, Seinfeld... but now the golden age of the internet is causing everything to slide into complacent mediocrity. I always thought intellectual snobbery would be here to comfort me in my old age, but the internet and market viability are teaming up to take that away from me too.

Presidents Reagan and Bush 41 issued immigration regulations that were expressly authorized by a law passed by Congress. In 1986, Reagan signed into law the Immigration Reform and Control Act. The Act required him to adjust the status of certain illegal immigrants to the category of “alien lawfully admitted for temporary residence.” The Act also authorized the Attorney General to allow other illegal immigrants who did not qualify for the amnesty to remain in the U.S. if needed “to assure family unity.”

...the administration made it clear that it was carrying out the direction of Congress. It even cited the section of the law that provided this direction (section 245(d)(2)(B)(i) of the 1986 Act).

Well, let's follow your link. To a blog called "Powerline," a bunch of right-wingers who thought the WPE wasn't conservative enough. And let's see how long it takes to find a lie at that link. Well, that didn't take long, the second sentence: "... Obama himself has repeatedly admitted he lacks the constitutional power to make this move." No, what Obama has repeated said is that he doesn't have the power to permanently amend the law.

But maybe Powerline is right about Reagan "following the direction of Congress" and not his own lights. Silly me, of course not. A few minutes on the google finds that Reagan used his authority under the law to allow the immigration of Poles in 1981 (5K), Ethiopians in 1982(15K), and Nicaraguans in 1987 (200K). The first two actions came before the 1986 act you cited, and all of them were based on political grounds, not family unity.

Some supporters of Obama’s unilateral actions on immigration have also pointed to other actions by past presidents that allowed immigrants such as Afghans and Nicaraguans to stay in the U.S. But those limited actions were based on very special circumstances such as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the Communist-driven civil war in Nicaragua or the Chinese massacre of students in Tiananmen Square that led Bush to grant deferred departure to threatened Chinese nationals.

Moreover, our immigration laws contain exceptions permitting temporary protected status when an illegal alien’s home country is beset with civil strife or recovering from a natural disaster. America’s generous asylum policies also give safe haven to aliens who if returned to their home countries would face persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. The special circumstances that prompted Reagan and Bush to act compassionately, but also within the legal boundaries set by Congress, simply do not exist here.

BTW deadrat, I think there's a good chance that the SCOTUS will find this action unconstitutional. Obama had various moral justifications, but his legal justification was "prosecutorial discretion". This is a dangerous precedent. Could a President use prosecutorial discretion to set a policy of not enforcing corporate income tax laws? That would more or less amount to abolishing corporate income tax. If not, how do you legally distinguish Obama's action from my hypothetical action?

If you want to argue that Obama's actions aren't as "limited" as Reagan's, that's fine. If you want to claim that Obama's reasons for his actions aren't as sound as Reagan's, then that's fine as well. But don't quote vote-suppression cheerleader and serial prevaricator Hans von Spakovsky at me. Obama is using the authority in the immigration law to do something teahadists don't like. That doesn't make what he's doing illegal or unconstitutional. That's called a policy dispute.

OK, DAinCA, what makes you think there's a good chance that SCOUTS will find Obama's actions unconstitutional? Some rightwing website you went to?

First of all, Obama's justification was not "prosecutorial discretion." This phrase is something you either made up or more likely something you read on that website. Obama did not use those words in his speech, and for good reason. Removal of people here illegally is mostly a civil procedure, not a criminal one. The justification Obama uses is the broad discretionary powers that immigration laws grant the President to designate classes of illegals who won't be targeted for deportation.

Could SCOTUS overrule Obama? Sure. I wouldn't put much pass the Court we have, but generally speaking, SCOTUS hates to get involved in spats between the executive and legislative branches. And who's got standing to sue? That is, who has suffered particularized harm from the decision? Congress? The House already has a frivolous lawsuit against Obama over the ACA, so they'll have to get in line. Is there even enough time to get such nonsense through the courts?

Remember when Arizona decided it could set immigration policy? That went to the Supreme Court as Arizona v US, and here's what Kennedy said for the majority: "A principal feature of the removal system is the broad discretion exercised by immigration officials. Federal officials, as an initial matter, must decide whether it makes sense to pursue removal at all."

So the Court has already ruled that it's up to the executive to decide whether it makes sense to deport.

Your parallel to corporate income tax laws is ludicrous, in part because most companies have legal ways to dodge their tax liability. You would have a parallel if Obama had said that he didn't plan to enforce immigration law at all. But that's not what he's doing, and in fact, he has deported more illegals than his predecessors. So unless you think that the exemptions amount to abolishing immigration law, you've got no point at all.

You make some good points, deadrat. I wouldn't bet even money that the courts will overrule Obama's action.

Still, there's a possible flaw in Obama's argument. He references the "broad discretionary powers that immigration laws grant the President to designate classes of illegals who won't be targeted for deportation." As I understand it, the classes that a President can so designate are specified in various laws. E.g, the class of people who cannot safely return to their native land. I don't know that the President has the power to choose any class he wants.

Here's another thought, which may be wishful thinking. Will Obama's action on immigration affect the Court decision on ObamaCare? The issues are similar, from a legal POV. Obama is asserting that the agency's interpretation should be honored. In other words, the executive branch has broad discretion in how to interpret a law. Even if Obama's immigration action doesn't get to the Supreme Court, I can imagine one undecided Justice using the health law in order to rule that a President's powers are not unlimited.

It has already been decided, and numerous times, that a President's powers are not unlimited. But the decisions came on particular issues. The Supreme Court cannot simply decide on the general proposition that a President's powers are not unlimited.

Any decision about the immigration EO will be based on whether the President has the discretion he claims the law gives him. The decision on the ACA will be based on the meaning of a phrase in a Congressional statute. So the "issues are similar" for the value of similar meaning "unrelated."

One side says the word "state" means "state". The Administration (like Humpty Dumpty) says the word "state" whatever they say it means, after the fact. The Administration says they can decide whether "state" should mean "state" or mean "state or nation".

There's no legislative history, since none of the Dems who voted for this POS even knew what the law said. There is evidence that Prof. Gruber, who wrote this section, intended "state" to mean "state". Since he's not a legislator, I don't know whether his opinion has legal impact.

Another Admin argument is that ObamaCare won't work unless "state" is taken to mean "state or nation." Regardless of what the word was intended to mean, they want the SCOTUS to fix the law so that it works.

SCOTUS has done this sort of thing before. E.g., in the appalling Kelo decision , they decided to pretend that the Constitution's words "public use" actually meant "public benefit." The Court's actual reasoning was that they wanted to preserve the practice of urban renewal.

Yes, deadrat, this case is about what a phrase means. But, it's also about whether the Administration has the discretion to go beyond the plain meaning of a law.

Right. Got it, D. Venal, vindictive mean and spiteful republican governors refuse to set up exchanges in their own states because they are pissant pygmy heartless bastards who couldn't and wouldn't allow this president to succeed with a policy that would help their own constituents. If they win on their technical argument what do they win? They will succeed in being responsible for insurance suddenly becoming far more expensive for millions of people, their own citizens. Go for it fuckhead.

If you knew the slightest thing about the Kelo case, you'd know that the Supreme Court has actually done exactly the same thing before in defining public use to mean public benefit. See HHA v Midkiff 467US229 (1984). The Court was following precedent, and your ignorant outrage notwithstanding, that's why they decided that public use extended beyond public ownership. YMMV and would have some relevance once you're appointed to the Supreme Court, or barring that, once you learned anything about the case.

And, no surprise, your summary of the ACA case is wrong as well. There is nothing about deciding that state means state or nation. The question is whether the law contemplates that the federal insurance exchange can serve as a a state exchange in the cases where a state has refused to set up its own exchange. That's the way all of the CBO economic analyses worked, and that's what the bill's authors claim.

That may be what the bill's authors NOW claim. However, there are videos of Prof Gruber explaining that he intentionally used the word "state" in order to pressure states into setting up an exchange.

Rregarding HHA v Midkiff, wiki says, The decision, though, placed limits on the power of the government citing:

A purely private taking could not withstand the scrutiny of the public use requirement; it would serve no legitimate purpose of government and would thus be void.... The Court's cases have repeatedly stated that 'one person's property may not be taken for the benefit of another private person without a justifying public purpose, even though compensation be paid.

Anyhow, regardless of precedent, I'm innocent enough to be shocked that the Supreme Court took some perfectly clear Constitutional wording and effectively pretended that it said something else. Also, from a policy POV, the Kelo decision legalizes corrupt rich people and rich organizations taking property from poor and middle-class people. Liberals ought to hate this decision.

mm -- In my fairly expert opinion, ObamaCare is poorly structured and will result in worse medical care than other approaches. We'd be better off if this law were repealed, so we could start again with a more effective approach. YMMV.

As far as I know, Prof Gruber was not in Congress, so his opinion does not matter for legislative intent.

Thanks for at least going to wikipedia to find a quote that supports my position. "A purely private taking" would be unconstitutional. There has to be a justifying public purpose. Emphases mine. The Court decided this issue in 1984 about takings that aren't purely private and that have some public purpose. The Court decided that public purposes may be accomplished via private owners.

Yeah, and regardless of precedent, you're shocked, just shocked that Court ruled that way. But it's not your innocence that's the problem; it's your ignorance of the law. And forgive me if I find your ringing defense of the poor laughable.

As for the ACA, your "expert" opinion? When did you become an expert in insurance reform? You apparently think that the ACA regulates medical care. It doesn't. It regulates insurance. No doubt we'd be better off if we repealed the ACA and went to single payer, but that's not gonna happen, and neither is your fictional "more effective approach." But let me guess, you've got decent health insurance for you and your family.

I agree that single payer would be better. Single provider (like the UK) would be better yet. Or, if one is going to use insurance, the insurance should focus on large claims, rather than pay for ordinary doctor visits. Actually, ACA is bad that almost anything would be better.

Maybe in some theoretical sense of the word, ACA doesn't "regulate" medical care. However, in practice it has a huge impact on how medical care is provided. Here are some ways:1. It drives some doctors into concierge medicine, including my own primary care physician. So, it partially determines which doctors are available to the non-rich.

2. It determines which procedures and which medicines are covered (as does Medicare.) I switched medicine I take for back pain when they stopped covering Celebrex.

3. Long term it affects the people who choose to become doctors. If being a doctor is seen as less desirable, then more able people will choose some other profession.

4. At some point, I believe that ACA won't have enough money to provide prompt care to all those who need it. There will then be some sort of de facto rationing of care.

5. If ACA holds down prices of medicines and medical devices, there will be less development of improved medicines and devices.

1. We'll see. With more people having access to medical care, there may be a higher demand for doctors, so the system should produce more doctors.

2. The determination of procedures and medications is the same under the ACA as it was before. But before the ACA, the administration was done entirely under insurance company rules.

3. Nonsense. There are twice as many applicants for medical school than medical schools are willing to enroll.

4. The ACA doesn't provide money for care, prompt or otherwise. It provides money for insurance. We'll see if increasing coverage reduces availability of care. Before the ACA, millions relied on the most expensive option, emergency rooms.

5. The ACA has nothing to do with the price of either medication or medical devices except that it taxes some medical devices. The development of medicines is in the hands of Big Pharma, and what they develop will continue per usual -- whatever they think will make them the most money.

I don't get why this story would be of interest to anyone outside of Whitefish, Montana. I'm sure even John McCain doesn't give a ^%$#. Why would Maddow's viewers care? Bewildering. Maybe she is in the early stages of dementia.

Well @ 7:49 if Bob had told his readers what topic the story was an introduction to, perhaps you could make a critique that it was a bad lead. Too long and not well connected to her point. Maddow is prone to doing that. But Bob didn't.

Somerby likes to critcize people for leaving things out but he does it himself all the time. The segment he criticizes led into a story about the far right rejecting the traditional right and why that fight might again lead to a government shutdown in three weeks.

Somerby counts on his readers not to follow his links. Maddow made mistakes, but Bob deliberately misled.

@ 10:06, you are what Bob once described Maddow's viewers to be in a post about the George Washington Bridge. In that post he criticized Maddow for putting something into the story he felt didn't need to be there.

In this post Bob chose to critique Maddow for telling a tale, not me. He just left out two thirds of the tale, including its point. That was his decision. Not mine. And it led @ 7:49 to accuse her of dementia.

She has 22 minutes of show to fill. We watched the whole thing -- the first time we've watched more than a few minutes of her show -- and it's obvious she's just talking to fill space. Such a show has to be very cheap to produce: just a set, a talking head, some clips, a few writers, and you are done. A format like that, with so much aimless yakking, gives someone like Bob lots of opportunities to maneuver, lots of material to pick from to find something to attack. Personally, we don't understand how anyone -- Bob included -- could watch such dreadful tripe day after day after day, but several hundred thousand people do.

We do think she said some useful things, and her attacks were against Republicans, extremists, and racists, tying them together. How someone (as does Bob) could object to it on the grounds that it somehow harms liberalism, well, we have no idea.

And Bob does, indeed, pick out the worst stuff he can find to fuel his the attack, leaving out everything else.

Why criticize something that doesn't need criticizing? Of course you pick out the worst stuff to attack. That is what critics do.

That she wastes time filling her show with drivel is the point. It hurts liberalism because that time could have been used to help liberalism.

It isn't only that she focused on drivel. It is that she tells lies and is careless about fact-checking, that her partisanship borders on propaganda (which doesn't help anyone), and that he main purpose is self-promotion.

Fortunately, it appears that there is only one person among Bob's fandom who doesn't understand that zero is not a negative number.

To put it less opaquely, in a cheaply produced show of 22 minutes, there are going to be dead spots. It is impossible not to have them. That doesn't mean the entire show is dead. On balance, the show we watched advanced a liberal message in a more-or-less competent fashion (which is more than we can say for anything Bob has done in many years). Bob takes the dead spots and pretends they are the sum of the show. It's dishonest and ultimately pointless, when it isn't destructive. "We the people" might be dumb, but most liberals watching one of Maddow's shows and then reading one of Bob's critiques of said show would almost certainly come away from the experience with a lower opinion of Bob than they have of Maddow. Based on that show and Bob's critique of it, Bob is less honest, and far less useful to liberalism, than is Maddow. Bob, with his endless series of cranky, twisted, often dishonest complaints, is a negative number on the scale of liberalism.

This isn't a popularity contest. The main premise is that a journalist should be telling the truth, and that should further a liberal message without distorting the truth and propagandizing people. It doesn't matter whether people might prefer to be propagandized or not. There is a higher value involved -- and that is what makes journalism a profession (with a code of ethics) instead of a job.

We wish you the best as you go through life with that approach. We wish anyone trying to accomplish anything in life the best if they try to go through life with that approach. Particularly in a democracy.

Whether or not it was a "fight" is subject to interpretation of the word. Whether or not Maddow lied, in this instance, then, is not. Whether or not this is a fit subject for discussion, and whether Bob should have even brought it up, let alone devote a few paragraphs to it -- well, that's why people attack Bob. Perhaps Bob is motivated enough to read this and understand that fact, although we doubt it. On you, we will give up.

I disagree. What happened on the ski slope was not a fight under any defintion or interpretation. The Nazi guy berated the McCain guy according to the article. Then McCain guy didn't respond to him at all and the Nazi guy skied away. That is not a fight under any definition or interpretation of the word.

Can you explain your logic for interpreting it as a fight? Thanks - not busting chops just don't understand how you interpret the facts as presenting in that article as a fight. What is your interpretation? Your logic hinges on it being interpretable as a fight. I may be wrong about it. Please show me how.

Hey Rachael Maddow dipshit. The guy said it wasn't a fight and then you called him stupid and told him to look up the word fight. THEN you said "whether or not it was a "fight" is subject to interpretation". Why is he stupid if it's subject to interpretation? Can you see how stupid (and mean) YOU are?

We think there are at least two stupid people in this thread. We do not think we are one of them. Just to reiterate:

1) Bob claims Maddow is dishonest for characterizing the event as a "fight," implying that it absolutely was NOT a fight.

2) We, reading the article, and knowing the definition of the word "fight," (our own definition includes, but is not limited to, "verbal altercation"), thought first, it is reasonable, and not definitively dishonest, to call the event a fight, AND,

3) Even if it isn't, the difference isn't worth bothering about. In a 22 minute show or segment, the most salient thing to Bob's mind is whether or not one person yelling at another constitutes a "fight"?

Yet, Bob stupidly devoted several paragraphs to the issue, and the other lowbrow devoted several more, and, assuming that these new lowbrows aren't sockpuppets, some others came in wanting to demonstrate their own mental deficiencies for the world to see. In our view, their mission is accomplished.

When Al said, "I will fight for you," a lot of voters thinking like Somerby took "fight" to mean the only thing it possibly can mean to Somerby -- Al Gore, as president, would get into fistfights. After all, he promised us he would.

It wasn't an "altercation" by any definition of the word. One of the parties didn't say a word. It was not a verbal altercation. There was no fight, there was no altercation. There wasn't even a conversation!

You didn't explain your conflicting statements. Why it is both stupid to say this is not a fight when whether or not it is a fight is "subject to interpretation of the word"? If it's subject to interpretation and someone interprets it as not a fight, why is that stupid? Never mind. Don't explain. Let's just say you think it's stupid when something that is subject to interpretation is interpreted. And that you think you are not stupid.

There are also issues of accuracy. Is saying these two men "got into a fight" (4 times) the most accurate way to describe what happened? Of course not. Your attempts to characterize it as a fight are a bit tortured . She was being sensational and mischaracterizing in a disingenuous way. Or she read the report wrong like you did. Either way, Bob, rightly or wrongly, seems to be insisting that she be honest and accurate 100 percent of the time on her show. I know you disagree with him and are extremely troubled by his blog as is your right. I'll stop bothering you now. Have a good day. If it makes you feel better, I will concede that you are right and I am wrong. That you are smart and I am dumb. That Bob and his fans are bad and you are good. Does that feel better?

By interpretation of the above comments regarding Maddow's claim there was a fight, Al Gore didclaim involvement in creating the internet, and invent is a synonym for create. Al Gore claimed he invented the internet.

There was no creation or invention of the internet by Al Gore or Congress.by any definition of either word.

It's a good question for a lexicographer. In a situation involving two parties where one berates the other and the other responds with complete passitivity and silence, can it be called a fight or an altercation? Or: can a fight between 2 people involve only 1 person who acts? I don't see any evidence of it but will research it further. Enduring a beratement is obviously not a fight but maybe there is some kind of nuance that could move a situation as that under the umbrealla of the term 'fight'. Obviously it's quite a stretch either way.

Nice fable, 6:26. Great attempt to fit it into Somerby's narrative. Unfortunately, that's not what the Daily Beast reported.

Spencer hurled some insults at Schuenemann, then SPENCER skiied away like a coward.

Schuenemann reported it to a club official threatening to punch the guy the next time he saw Spencer. Then Schuenemann confronted Spencer at a Christmas party, inviting him to repeat his insults when Spencer couldn't ski away, and topping that off with a rather profane insult.

In other words, "Insults were exchanged, punches were threatened" exactly as Maddow reported it.

Somerby can't argue about that. So he once again dives head first into the shallow end of the pool and turns his obsessive rage against Maddow over a rather peculiar and extremely narrow definition of "fight."

Was it really worth a 2,000 word post? Do you even realize how foolish you look trying to defend this?

This issue is about a "fight" on the ski slope. That's how it was reported. Those events from the article you mention don't describe a fight on a ski slope. There wasn't a fight on the ski slope. You may be right about Bob's nefariousness and all the problems out there bringing things down, that's cool. I got no opinion one way or another. There was not a "fight" on the ski slope is all I'm saying.

@ 10:10 we note you conveniently left out how Bob linked this to the face of journalism changing before our eyes. You didn't mention Salon's coverage of butts or the fact the New Republic is now owned by a 30 year old.

These facts contribute to Maddow taking an old story about a ski lift insult and making it into some big fight.

It is hilarious how quickly Bob's sheep whip out "literalism" when a critic holds Bob accountable for the actual words he writes. The sheep flock to inform the world of what hidden, deeper, true and real meaning is behind such absurdities as "MIT doesn't care about raped children."

And now, Rachel Maddow reports "Insults were exchanged, punches were threatened" -- but that doesn't meet their rather hastily drawn and narrow definition of "fight" that is now the ONLY, "literal" definition of fight that can possibly matter.

Thus, Maddow is a liar because the two men did not trade actual blows, thus there was no fight, and further more, had they traded blows in the ski club, that still makes Maddow a liar because she said, "at the ski lift, at the club,"

"He got into a fight on the ski lift with a white supremacist, specifically with this guy, who is sort of America’s foremost white supremacist." This statement by Maddow is not true. I know you hate Bob and his fans and you think it's not important that she falsely said this. You may be right but it is not a true statement.

Look, you're arguing with Rachel Maddow's Smuggly Coddled Taint.This person believes that it's more important to point out errors on a non-advertised blog than discussing how the current media climate may not be helping to create a well-informed electorate.This person does not understand the inherent problems with liberal leaders and spokespersons being very wealthy. This is why there is a great difference between FOX and those that call themselves liberal. FOX is overt about cheerleading for the rich, but should you trust someone that says they're fighting for the middle class when they are living uptown?

Well, if you believe Scheunemann, there would have been a fight if Scheunemann's kid wasn't on the lift behind the two would be combatants and Spencer was able to ski away before getting his clock cleaned. And if you further believe Scheunemannthere would have been a fight if the two had run into each other again. And finally, if you believe Scheunemann, he once again challenged Spencer to talk like a man but the "fucking racist pussy" scurried off.

Maybe there wasn't a real fight but

a) girls like Maddow don't know what a real fight is and,

b) there would have been a fight if man's man and neo-con Scheunemann had his way.

Maddow should have used words like "spat" or "fracas." Bob has every right to insist on proper use of the English language in the face of journalism which is changing right before our eyes. Of course I wish he would stop calling young adult college graduates "kid reporters." He kind of lies when he does that.

Again, for Bob to call Maddow a liar about whether or not the two confrontations between these two men constituted a "fight" , a Bobfan must reduce the definition of fight to only one possible meaning and ignore the description Maddow gave: "insults were exchanged, punches were threatened."

This is how it works on TDH -- absolute literalism is required of all Bob's targets, even down to redefining words with clear meaning to fit the narrative.

But when it comes to Bob? Ignore the words he says. Look for the "true meaning" behind "MIT doesn't care for raped children" etc. Or even better, "Liberals don't care about black children" because they aren't sufficiently reporting how the one subgroup Bob chooses (fourth graders) on the one national test out of an array of national tests that Bob chooses as "the gold standard" with its "very rough rule of thumb."

More examples of Bob rushing to the defense of "progressive interests"? Women don't really make 77 cents on the dollar, despite the Labor Department statistics that show that women make 77 cents on the dollar. Bob knows better.

D'Leisha Dent's problems getting into college -- long after she had gotten into college -- are problems we can't solve because we ended racism 50 years ago. Besides, her parents should have talked to her more when she was a baby.

And Gov. Ulltrasound really did nothing all that heinous when he and his wife stuffed bribes into their pockets, because they really didn't do all that much in return -- besides offering state employees as guinea pigs for the magic tobacco pill.

And it still could be a "legitimate traffic study." Besides, Christie who invented a six-figure job to give Wildstein didn't even know the guy all that well. Christie was the jock and class president. Wildstein was the high school nerd.

8:08- When Rachel's girlfriend asks her, "do I look fat in this dress? " she lies. She lies because she is being a good person. I just lied, because that story wasn't true, and I put it in quotes.Now, the author of this blog lies all the time. He very obviously does not like RM and what she brings to the media landscape.So, it's pretty clear why Sommerby presents his material the way he does, can you answer truthfully why RM lies on the air?

Someone around here once delivered a lecture about how NOT to use the word "lie" so casually, because a lie involves a very conscious and knowing decision to deceive, rather than a simple misinterpretation or even misunderstanding of the evidence before us.

Now who was that? Oh yeah. Somerby himself when it fits his narrative not to call out the lies told on Fox News.

But when two guys cuss at each other and threaten to go at it physically? It's a lie to call that a "fight."

And this is why Somerby, with his ever shifting goal posts, has let his jealousy over the success of other "progressive" pundits and his self-loathing over his own Harvard-educated life not very well lived, has descended into irrelevancy.

Maddow claimed there was a fight on the ski slope. Your characterization:

"But when two guys cuss at each other and threaten to go at it physically?" did not happen on the ski lift. That happened (a year) later. It may not be a lie - she may have been mistaken - but it's not true that the guy "got into a fight on the ski lift."

So you got that a little wrong. There was no fight on the ski lift which is what she claimed.

You have to read to the end of TDB to find the best part of the story. There you'll find the Republican campaign apparatchik saying, "“I don’t want to be in a club that has this overt racist in it." This is the funniest quote since a certain police prefect was shocked to find gambling in the back of a bar in Casablanca.

I looked for the word "liar" in TDH's entry. I couldn't find it, or anything like it. That's your word. TDH thinks the story is dreck, not worth reporting on at all, and misleadingly presented. Seems fair to me. And around these parts, it isn't a fight until someone has at least tried to throw a punch, if only metaphorically.

"The gold standard" is not TDH's description of the NAEP.

TDH's criticism of the 77 cents issue is reserved for people who claim that's what women get for every dollar a man makes for the same job. He quotes both Obama and Maddow claiming this. Is TDH wrong?

Suppose TDH had reported that D'Leisha was a track star, but she couldn't win a medal in the 100 meter dash. That would seem to be a (hypothetical) problem, no? Then suppose D'Leisha enters a track meet where everyone who shows up gets a medal. Is there still a problem or not?

Nowhere in any of the Tuscaloosa entries does TDH say that "problems" can't be solved because we ended racism. He says that racial imbalance in public schools cannot be solved with the legal tools that we used in the 1950s. Do you think he's wrong?

There is no "tobacco pill." The dietary supplement made by the McDonnells' friend Williams is called Anatablock, and it contains anatabine, a compound like nicotine, which is found in small amounts in tobacco but in other plants as well. It apparently has no discernible beneficial effects. No state employees were "guinea pigs" for the supplement. Williams pitched Anatablock as suitable for the formulary of the pharmacy available to state workers through their health insurance. He was ignored. Two of my state's ex-governors are in jail, one for trying to sell a US Senate seat, the other for issuing licenses for bribes while he was head of the DMV. One of the holders of a bogus license killed six children in a collision. In my state, these acts are technically against state law. Not so the McDonnells' actions in Virginia. Heinous is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

No one knows why the clowns who closed the lanes during Bridgegate did what they did. TDH says wait to find out, even if their eventual claims turn out to be hoaxes and frauds. Do you know why the lanes were closed? Darlin' Rachel thinks it might have something to do with a state senator Christie was feuding with. What do you think? Christie and Wildstein were apparently not close friends in high school. Should it be reported otherwise?

Revealing that Maddow takes the side of a neocon warmonger who was deeply involved with the launching of the Iraq War and deserves (based on the Nuremberg precedent) to be brought before a war crimes tribunal and then hanged by the neck.

First of all, my ancestors did come here legally. However,. this is a red herring. Immigrants are coming to this country legally every day. The US has relatively generous immigration laws. Secondly, any country has the right and obligation to decide who may come to live there. We should make this decision using our constitutional legal process.

Don't worry DinC. Even if you can't show your papers, Obama's Executive Order will keep your ancestors's remains from being deported. Even if not, they will at least have been baptized by the Mormons first.

I think baptizing the dead was a smart move by the Mormons. It helped them overcome centuries of oppression and do better than blacks on tests.

If your ancestors came here before 1920, they didn't come here legally or illegally. They just came here.-----------------Regardless, Republicans have boxed themselves in on immigration. They can't do anything that looks like it helps immigrants, because they'll catch hell for turning their back on the bigot vote they've been courting for more than a generation.

I can't agree with your logic, Berto. My ancestors violated no laws when they came here, so they came here legally.

People who support LEGAL integration, but oppose ILLEGAL immigration are not bigots (or not necessarily bigots.) There was tremendous public support for a border fence. I think a majority of voters support the US controlling its borders and choosing who should and shouldn't be permitted to live here. If the Dems' answer is to call this majority of voters "bigots", I think the voters will punish the Dems. YMMV

There were no immigration laws for your ancestors to violate.------------"People who support LEGAL integration, but oppose ILLEGAL immigration are not bigots (or not necessarily bigots.)"That has zero to do with my statement that Republicans can't do anything that looks like it helps immigrants, because they'll catch hell for turning their back on the bigot vote they've been courting for more than a generation.

Also, is this statement true?"There was tremendous public support for a border fence."

Because I remember most of the public was upset about the deficit. Surely they knew the border fence wouldn't be built for free. I find it impossible to believe there was "tremendous public support" to increase the deficit.

Wikipedia saysThe bill was introduced on Sep. 13, 2006 by Peter T. King (R-NY). In the House of Representatives, the Fence Act passed 283 -138 on September 14, 2006. On September 29, 2006 – the Fence Act passed in the Senate 80 -19.

I am presuming that the lopsided vote in Congress mirrored public opinion. A 2013 poll of voters showed support for the fence by a 2 to 1 margin:

A 2013 Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% of Likely U.S. Voters think the United States should continue building a border fence, while 29% disagree. Fourteen percent (14%) are not sure if the government should keep building a fence along the Mexican border. See http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/april_2013/57_think_u_s_should_continue_building_a_fence_along_mexican_border

Wow. It's like that whole scary deficit thing was nothing more than a way to tie the hands of Obama, and reduce funding on programs for the less fortunate. I'd ask you to inform the media and the Tea Party (who are nothing at all like the Republican Party, because the Tea Party, honest to god, really, is concerned about spending and the deficit), I'm pretty sure they've known it all along.

I guess it depends on how you define "conservative" and "liberal.' I would differentiate them first and foremost on the size and power of government. Liberals want government to be bigger and stronger and conservatives the reverse.

Based on this criterion, the liberal side did worse in East German vs. \West Germany. North Korea vs. Souith Korea. Taiwan vs. PRC. Texas vs. California. Chile vs. Argentina.

Now, there are some big government countries that function well, such as Israel, and Norway. So, big government isn't always bad. But, on average, the freer, smaller government jurisdictions have more often been better for the people.

David, it isn't the size of the government but the services provided to the people by that government that matter. Most countries in Europe, whether Eastern or Western, provide more services to their people (who are taxed for those services) because they lived during WWII and wanted security, an end to starvation, housing, health care, and a life without threat after having lived with the chaos of war. As a consequence, all of those countries, regardless of political ideology, take better care of their citizens than we do. Talking as though people were choosing the size of government as opposed to the quality of life is absurd.

Maddow lies. Sometimes she is just misinformed like on her disastrous Meet the Press appearance where she embarrassed all liberals by showing her ignorance about the 77cents statistic. Sometimes she is bending the truth a little, sometimes she is just being catty, partisan, immature and lame. But Fox News is a whole other game. It's not like she lies like they do!

Sorry Anon @ 8:57. Aside from the right, BOB, and a handful of BOBfans, I don't think anyone thinks Maddow's performance on Meet the press regarding the 77 cent statistic was either misinformed or disastrous.

However, BOB repeatedly lied in his coverage of both that event and the issue following that event, and BOfanWorld was misinformed as a result.

We wonder how long it will be before Bob is thundering at Fox News for their "increasingly" deranged and dishonest reporting, that is dumbing down Fox viewers like Maypo, thereby alienating "average (white) voters." We also wonder when the Easter Bunny will arrive, and are looking for a good cookie recipe with which to delight Santa when he slithers down our chimney.

Nevermind that, of course. We are sure Rachel Maddow will have done something that just infuriates poor, honesty-loving Bob that will demand his attention. Perhaps next she will describe a four-leaf clover as a "weed," surely deserving of his opprobrium. Or -- a pet peeve of our own -- describe a short sleeve shirt as a "dress shirt." That one deserves the death penalty, although Bob, as a "liberal," opposes it. Still, in Maddow's case.... Perhaps Salon will show a picture of some hot girl's hot ass. These things are JUST LIKE what viewers of Fox get. And even if they aren't, "increasingly," they are, anyway.

We see something on the masthead of this blog claiming it to be "musings on the mainstream 'press corps' and the american discourse." Since it clearly is not that -- the mainstream press corps is almost never mentioned, while only one-half of the 'american discourse' gets regular attention -- we suggest it be amended. We have our own suggestion for said emendation: "Musings on the perpetually increasing dishonesty, lunacy, ignorance, disinterest, greed, and self-dealingness of the psuedo-left press corps, which will soon be just as bad as Fox News, except when we say it already is as bad, only to go back to saying 'increasingly, it is almost as bad as Fox News,' the next day." We admit, it's a mouthful, but then, to capture the vast vastness that this blog has become requires no less. We are open to the suggestions of others, of course.

Perhaps such an undertaking would dispel much confusion and frustration among the trollery, who might, reading Bob's own description of what his blog is supposed to be about, feel they have been misled, leading to anger which is sometimes expressed in unfortunate ways.

"Maddow did link to a recent news report about that city council meeting in Whitefish. According to the news report, the jam-packed meeting had nothing to do with any “ski lift fight,” or with the ski club at all."